I recently had to create an A6 booklet for an event that was being hosted by DHAN Foundation/Tata-Dhan Academy. At first, I thought it would be a nightmare to design and print it—particularly because I only had one day to do the layout for a 60+ page book—but it turns out that using [...]]]> Tutorial level: Elementary

I recently had to create an A6 booklet for an event that was being hosted by DHAN Foundation/Tata-Dhan Academy. At first, I thought it would be a nightmare to design and print it—particularly because I only had one day to do the layout for a 60+ page book—but it turns out that using OpenOffice.org (OOo) Writer makes the task quite simple.

Before going into details, here’s the logic I applied. One option was to assume I was only printing one copy of the book. In that case, it would make sense to lay the book out onto 7.5 A4 sheets (eight pages will fit on one sheet when printed double-sided). But, since I was going to print a couple of thousands of these, I could do the smart thing: do a simple double-sided “brochure” print from OOo Writer, turn my stack of paper around, and print the same file again. That way, you end up with two sets of the same page on each sheet, which means you can simply cut the sheet in half, fold the cut pieces in half, and you have two books ready to be stapled!

Here’s the simple step-by-step solution:

1. Create an A6 size page in the “Styles and Formatting” panel (A6 is 105mm x 148mm).
2. Go ahead and type your content as you normally would.
3. When you are done, go to “File > Print” and in the dialog box, click “Options”. Under “Options” make sure that “Brochure” is selected.
4. Print a full set of your document (you can duplex too, though this can be done later in the copying stage).
5. Turn your stack of printed papers around and print a full set again.

Imagining you had just a four-page document, you would have something that resembled Illustration 1.

If you were creating a four-page booklet, your print might look something like this.

For me, the nice thing about doing the layout this way is that I can easily have not only a print-ready document, but I can also use the PDF export feature built-in to OpenOffice.org Writer and I can also easily have a nice PDF to share say by email or online—all with no extra work.
It really is that easy!

Of course, another option is to simply create an A5 booklet and reduce it to 70% of the original size get the same results, but I think this is much more logical.

By the way, the only time I typically use metric is when I’m designing for A sheets. Here’s the breakdown of common A sizing in millimeters:

• A3 = 297 × 420
• A4 = 210 × 297
• A5 = 148 × 210
• A6 = 105 × 148

You’ve probably noticed that each smaller size is pretty much exactly half of the previous size. This is one advantage over the letter size used in the US. You can read more about page sizing standards at Wikipedia.

Downloads

The following files might help to give you an idea of what to expect in terms of different types of outputs.

• OpenOffice.org Writer file [download]
• Direct PDF export from OpenOffice.org [download]
• PDF of what you can expect if you used “File > Print” with “Brochure” selected [download]

From time to time, I like some minor embellishments in my design, and one such embellishment I use is the drop cap that you commonly find in magazines and so on. In OpenOffice.org (OOo) it is pretty easy to do this throughout a document. As with the last tutorial, this one [...]]]> Tutorial Level: Elementary

From time to time, I like some minor embellishments in my design, and one such embellishment I use is the drop cap that you commonly find in magazines and so on. In OpenOffice.org (OOo) it is pretty easy to do this throughout a document. As with the last tutorial, this one is also going to focus on how it can be done automatically using “Styles and Formatting” rather than having to manually recreate the effect on each paragraph.

First, there is one assumption. We do not want a drop cap on all paragraphs—that would look silly. The only place we want the drop cap is in the first paragraph immediately following a level 1 heading (which we’ll assume is being used for chapter titles and so on).

With that assumption, here’s how I would proceed.

Illustration 1: Paragraph Style Organizer Tab (click for more info)

1. Create a style called “Text body drop cap”.
   • To do this, first open “Styles and Formatting”, then right click in the “Paragraph Styles” section and select “new”.
   • Under the “Organizer” tab, use the following settings: “Next Style” is “Text body”. “Linked With” is also “Text body” (see Illustration 1).
   • Under the “Drop Caps” tab, make sure that “Display drop caps” is checked and modify according to your preference. Note here that you can either have single letter drop caps, multiple letter drop caps, or whole word drop caps (See Illustration 2).
   • When you’re done setting your styles, click on “OK.”
2. With “Styles and Formatting” still open, style your “Heading 1” to your liking. Also, on the “Organizer” tab, change “Next Style” from “Text body” to your new style, “Text body drop cap”.

Illustration 2: Settings for Drop Caps under the Paragraph Styles menu (click for more info)

And that’s it! Now you have nice drop caps for your document.

Making your drop caps fancy

Sometimes, it is nice to make your drop caps look a little different from the rest of your text by, say, using a different font or a different color. Again, using “Styles and Formatting” this is quite easy. What is required is that we also create what’s called a “character style” to be applied to the drop cap. (OOo lets you create styles for paragraphs, characters, frames, pages, and lists.)

You’ll see that there is already a character style called “Drop Caps”. Right click on that and select “Modify” to get a dialogue box where you can change things like the font, the font color, and so on. Then, go back to the third sub-point of step two above (Illustration 2) and, where it says “Character Style”, select “Drop Caps” from the drop-down menu.

Additional notes

One of the things that OOo does automatically for you is eliminate drop caps or make drop caps smaller according to your paragraph length. If, for example, your drop caps were set to be three lines, but your paragraph is only one line, it would not have a drop cap; similarly, if the paragraph were two lines, the drop cap would only cover those two lines.

Another thing you can do is adjust the spacing between your drop cap and the rest of your text. This can be useful if the font you’ve used for the drop cap is particularly ornamental and needs to be visually offset from the rest of the text.

Downloads

Download the following OpenDocument text file to see what my settings were in OOo and the PDF to see what the output could look like.

• OpenOffice.org Writer file [download]
• Final PDF output [download]

At the Tata-Dhan Academy where I work, with each new batch of students, we try to promote the adoption of freeware or open-source software instead of promoting the already ridiculous levels of piracy that goes on around here. So, during our orientation, we introduce the students to OpenOffice.org—something which, unfortunately, causes many of [...]]]> Tutorial Level: Intermediate

At the Tata-Dhan Academy where I work, with each new batch of students, we try to promote the adoption of freeware or open-source software instead of promoting the already ridiculous levels of piracy that goes on around here. So, during our orientation, we introduce the students to OpenOffice.org—something which, unfortunately, causes many of them to groan and complain. However, I really do prefer OpenOffice.org Writer over Microsoft Word for several reasons, and one reason is that I find it very easy to automate certain document layout features that would require a lot of extra work in Microsoft Word.

Consider the following requirements:

• You’re compiling an A5-sized booklet of stories.
• You want each story to have its title on a right-hand (odd numbered) page, and you want this page to have a background color.
• The story itself should also start on a right-hand page, about halfway down the page (maybe you’re planning to put a picture in the top half of the page).
• The first paragraph of the story should have a drop-cap of two to three lines (depending on how many lines the actual paragraph takes up); the rest of the paragraphs will have normal styling.
• When the story goes beyond its first page, you want the text to be in two columns.

So, is there a way to “automate” this to a certain extent?

With OpenOffice.org (OOo) Writer’s style options, once you’ve spent a little bit of time setting your styles up, doing something like this is not too difficult.

Here’s how we go about it.

Step 1: Page Styles

"Applied Styles" in the Styles and Formatting toolbar in OO.o. Click on image to read more.

For this purpose, I’ve created three page styles: “Story Title,” “Story First Page,” and “Story Continuation.” For “Story Title” I’ve set the margins to zero all around, and applied a background color. I’ve then assigned the “next style” setting to be “Story First Page.” For “Story First Page,” I’ve set my top page margin to four inches and I’ve set the “next style” to be “Story Continuation.” For these two pages, I’ve declared that they are only “right” pages—always an odd number. For “Story Continuation,” I’ve said to turn the header and footer on (so I can put the story title in the header, and the page number in the footer), I’ve said that text on the page should be in two columns, and I’ve left the “next style” as “Story Continuation.” These pages have been declared as both right and left, so they will continue logically.

For most elements in the "Styles and Formatting" toolbar, you can define the "Next Style". Click on image to read more.

Step 2: Text Styles

For this particular document, I need at least three text styles: (1) one for the story title; (2) one for the first paragraph of the story (where we have the drop-cap); and (3) one for the rest of the story.

Because I might want to create a table of contents at some time, I will use “Heading 1” for the story title, and I’ll create two special styles for the rest of the document: “Story Text First Paragraph” and “Story Text Continuation Paragraph.” Remember, I want my story title (Heading 1) to be on the “Story Title” page, my first paragraph (Story Text First Paragraph) to be on a “Story First Page” styled page. So, when I am defining the styles for “Heading 1,” I set the next style to be “Story Text First Paragraph” and I select the options to insert a page break before, with the page style “Story Title” applied. Similarly, for “Story Text First Paragraph,” I set the next style to be “Story Text Continuation Paragraph” and I select the option to insert a page break before with the page style “Story First Page” applied.

Automatic page breaks are possible with different types of text. Click on image to read more.

Step 3: Start Typing

No. Really, that’s pretty much it. You can now start typing your document and have it automatically insert blank pages where it should, start pages in the right place, format text correctly for you and so on. You can do some further embellishments, like having the headers on your page automatically change according to the story you’re on. This is simple to do since you are using a heading, but I think I’ll save that lesson for another time.

Downloads

Anyway, download these two files to see exactly which styles I applied and to view the resulting PDF.

• OpenOffice.org Writer File [Download] [Read More]
• Final PDF output [Download] [Read More]